


beneath the human heart

by the_names_of_those_who_love_the_lord



Category: Moonlight (2016)
Genre: Bisexual Male Character, Canon Character of Color, Gen, M/M, just a little speculative fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-05
Updated: 2017-03-05
Packaged: 2018-09-28 08:45:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,123
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10082009
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_names_of_those_who_love_the_lord/pseuds/the_names_of_those_who_love_the_lord
Summary: "Oh, I wanna dance with somebodyI wanna feel the heat with somebodyYeah, I wanna dance with somebodyWith somebody who loves me."- from "I Wanna Dance With Somebody", by Whitney Houston





	

There's a part of Terrell - a wet pulsing thing - that churns up his gut whenever he sees Chiron. He's lived with this weird organ since he was twelve, thirteen maybe, riding high on how the sunset threw dusky shadows onto his neighbour's face as they cycled down their street. 

It lies dormant most of the time. He misses it, kind of, when it's not there. His life is all surface tension with nothing underneath, the endless boredom chewing him alive. The good, hot feelings that come creeping mellow him out a little, give him something to think about when there's nobody around.

He thinks of it as a magnet that lives on his heart, pining for the iron filings of shirtless boys glowing on the beach. One particular summer, it seemed to strain against the drum-tight skin across his ribs, driving him crazy with its field. He thinks his head didn't clear until Septemper, spinning like a compass needle on the North Pole. He knows he should hate it, but he reckons he's followed the rules well enough to have earned this - a precious little generator, filling him at rare intervals with a lazy tenderness.

But Chiron makes him angry, somehow. That boy just walks into class with his sad black eyes and skin like paint and fucking tears the kill-switch off Terrell's generator, kicks it until it he can't breathe from the pain. Chiron makes him want to crawl away into a hole someplace to clutch at his chest and whimper, because suddenly side-glances and wistful, long-distance stares aren't enough anymore. The organ wants to feed, and Terrell has nothing to give. Chiron's eyes slide off him, mostly from fear, but there's a little disdain there, too. Terrell is hung between those two forces - Chiron's banal hatred of him, his own desperation - and he cannot stand it. But it doesn't stop.

His heart flutters day after day like a moth in a sealed glass box.

* * *

Terrell's always been a little shit, but Chiron drives his meanness to impressive, unforeseen heights. Bullying, in a way, is like playing jazz: you can play by the written notes to start, but everybody loves a little improvisation. And Lord, the stuff Terrell comes up with awes even him. Spouting off about tampons in class, screwing up his voice to coo _Little!_ Chiron hates that, and those jet-bead eyes smoulder with despise. Terrell's lived on indifference for so long, even antagonism feels good. Not enough - not nearly enough - but hey, no-one gets their nough in Liberty City.

The whole situation starts to drive him a little nuts. The constant roller-coaster hurtle of his blood lifts his head from his body. The beats of that organ become the beats of his heart, throb of his eyeballs, an all-over headache. He falls asleep thinking of Chiron, wakes from bright dreams with that fine-boned face plastered all over his mind.

Maybe the tide of hormone-addled blood corrodes his sense of caution. Perhaps the organ's really a tumour, and one day it bursts and coats his insides with bitter white fluid. Either way, in class, as the teacher drones, Terrell makes eye contact with Chiron. Holds it for a moment, like he would with a girl. (Yeah, he can still make it with girls, that's a fucking given.) Lets his eyes flick down to Chiron's lap. Pulls back up Chiron's blank stare and tries to tell him with a look that he honestly ain't playing, not this time. It's just that he's so fucking tired of this endless, sexless frustration. He wants to say that what used to feel so cool every time it came along tastes ashy these days, makes him wanna cry, but Chiron can fix it with only a little quirk of a smile. Please. 

Chiron looks right through him, then turns his head away.

Terrell's stupid, asshole heart breaks clean in two, and he could swear everything good inside him shuts down forever.

* * *

 

Kevin loves Chiron. Terrell sees this and, maddened, convinces Kevin to play knock-down against his brand-new honey.

And yeah, Kevin does it, but holy shit,  _bad_ idea. Chiron's not stupid. He knows who set it up.

Terrell doesn't know anything up until the chair shatters across his back.

* * *

Six weeks later, when the bruises have faded to green and yellow, Terrell is able to admit to himself that he got what he deserved. Hell, he doesn't even factor into the equation. When it came to Chiron, he was like one of those sailors in the old stories, waltzing around on a verdant island that turned out to be a kraken. Now, he flounders ten feet below the surface, gasping in water and waving in frantic, tortured slow-mo at the shadows the gulls make on the water. 

And really, what was it all for? Chiron went to juvie, and now Kevin just trails around like a guy who died long ago. So Terrell has a little company in the broken-hearts club - big deal. He'd rather have Chiron back, to look at and pine away for, to make Kevin happy again. 

Years pass in a numb haze. Everyone grows up and moves away. Terrell meets this guy with peculiar gold eyes who says he's cute, and he finally gets to feed something that doesn't exist in him anymore. Now it's only weeds. He throws compost on them, makes them a little ranker.

One night, lying awake, he hears the question he didn't know he'd been dreading: "You ever do any of this before now?"

"Tried," Terrell murmurs, slinging an arm around the warm dark stranger who's been in his bed for a month now. Somewhere in the fathomless inner world of his body, a withered tissue sadly quivers. "Didn't go the way I wanted it to."

"Aw, baby." A feather-gentle kiss lands on his shoulder. "You ever wonder what happened to them? Look 'em up on Facebook, all that shit?"

Terrell shakes his head, not trusting himself to talk with such a lump in throat. The truth is, he's terrified to even think of what could have happened to poor, gentle Chiron after the apocalypse of the chair. Maybe he died. Maybe he's still in prison. Maybe he's wandering Miami with metal fronts on his teeth and a handgun lying on the passenger seat of his car.

Although, there is another possibility, and it is the one that Terrell wants to believe: that Chiron found somebody fool enough to love him, as is at this moment basking in this same tawny peace.

He closes his eyes and pulls his stranger close.

There is a precious little muscle growing beneath his heart. The man in his arms wriggles and murmurs, half-asleep already. The muscle beats, beats, beats. 


End file.
